THW not cut off ties to one’s family and kin if they misbehaved

 

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Week 17

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Alienation and estrangement hurts the elder person more, and that’s why it should not be imposed lightly or at all.

Motion: THW cut off ties to one’s family and kin if they misbehaved
Role: Deputy Leader (opp.)

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The Economist reported that a record number of people are cutting their ties off to family (or relatives) due to differing views on major issues, such as children, culture, economics, lifestyle, politics, religion and worldviews. One of the reasons is that people have grown independent of their relatives, as they get their income, perks and purpose in life from the digital sphere, nation-state or workplaces. The social fabric created by family and relatives has grown insignificant and thin. Typical of today is that if people travel to their relatives, they may stay overnight at a hotel instead of their relatives. That is how much standards of living have risen since 1981.

Conservative Parents Raising Liberal Children
The most obvious case of estrangement revolves around children who turn liberal during their college years and who turn their backs on their conservative parents. That’s what happens all the time between people who vote for Democrats or Republicans. It is probably less common that conservative children turn their backs on their liberal parents, but that could also happen apparently. In Europe, where the partisan system is more florid and patchwork (displaying different political colours), this development is less pronounced, but it can happen in Europe, too, as parties are wont today to form either leftwing/rightwing blocks or Con vs. Lib blocks. Anyone may end up in the “wrong” block. Populist parties provide a reason to disown their voters, but if their collective adherents now count in the millions, they cannot either be dismissed today as “rightwing extremism”. Extremism per definition involves less than 1 % of people.

Another big watershed is heteronormativity vs. other leanings in people’s reproductive lives. If a child is gay and a parent is straight (straight obviously for having born or sired the child in the first place), it may cause a rift in the relationship, if the parents are overly critical of the lifestyle of their offspring that does not focus on settling down, for instance. In its own right, I do not think that a bigger percentage of children born today are gay, but the figures are comparable with the past. It is just that the LGBT+ community has become far more vocal than what it was in the past and that may cause some friction.

Other Breakable Relations
Relations to aunts, cousins (once, twice or thrice removed), siblings and uncles are not frictionless, either. The same reasons that break up filial–parental relationships may cause breakup between horizontal relatives. Another layer is breakups that follow from breakups. When one family member breaks up ties with someone, the whole family may follow that example and cut ties to all in that other family. Which is wrong, of course. When we have a criminal in society, we only send that one person to a penitentiary and not his or her kin. The same should go for rifts between individuals. The only type of relatives that ends up unscathed is in-laws. They are usually protected by the fact that there is a relationship between two people with their respective families and that sends a protective “magnetic shield” over most members of the other person’s family.

A fairly good depiction of different family ties was in the TV show The Sopranos, where a lot of the Italian families had different kinds of feuds, fondnesses or frictions with each other. Tony Soprano did not get along with his sister Janice or mother Livia. Made men were often each other’s cousins or uncles. If someone died, all the others turned up for a funeral. The roots of all of that ran deep, all the way to the time when the families’ founding fathers had first immigrated to the US.

The Dance of Disinheritance
Like our leader on our side said, it is not like parties in estrangement are toothless. Cutting ties is a drastic measure, often given without prior warnings as a one-off punishment, and therefore it is inherently unjust. People cut off ties to each other easier than they would be, say, sacked from their tenure or workplace. There, their treatment would be much more clement. For these reasons, we do not see it unjustified that a parent who gets cut off – and cannot get back what once was severed, after several attempts – is entitled to disinherit his or her children due to the other one’s unilateral unjustness. Just like alienation and estrangement send a passive-aggressive signal, disinheriting a relative sends a countersignal.

How disinheriting goes about is another matter entirely. In some nation-states, disinheriting is far easier by the law than in others. But everywhere it is possible to bequeath or will at least a part of one’s fortune to someone else than family or relatives. Sangios crassior aqua, and that’s what people seem to have forgotten. With family and relatives, we need to have a thicker nose and skin than with others, because they’re the only ones we’ve got, as opposed to the myriad possibilities in other human relations.

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Perustelu(t)&puolustelu(t): Kokemuksia ja mielipiteitä jakavassa aiheessa pidän sukulaisten puolta vaistomaisesti. Edelläni kulkeva puhuja voi hehkuttaa perhe- ja sukulaisuussuhteiden hyviä puolia ja jäljessäni kulkeva voi hehkuttaa edelleen perinnöttä jättämisen helppoutta, mitä en itse käsittele kovin tarkasti. Näin koko puolen paketti on valmiina.

THW give hard time to each social worker who is complicit in a death

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Week 8

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Burning on one’s conscience.

Motion: THW give hard time to each social worker who is complicit in a death
Role: PM (gov.)

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Lately there has been a tragedy in the nation. A 4-year old victim died in the hands of his own parents, who abused him badly in their home in Eastern Finland. The child died after a prolonged agony measured in months & years rather than hours. The final reason of death was burns and possible internal-organ failures. The body of a 4-year old cannot take what the body of an adult can take, and the pair had gone over the boundary of “acceptable” a long time ago.

This was not the first time a young person died like this. 12 years ago, a female victim who was 8 years old at the time, died in similar circumstances in Southern Finland. In both instances, social workers knew about the troublesome couple and how they were suspect; yet, time and again they returned the suffering child to the couple who were managing its affairs very badly. It is as if they were respecting the parental rights of the couple more than anything else in the world – including common sense. What’s more, profiling could reveal some of these couples. In both cases, they consisted of a parent and a stepparent. So, what are the reasons why social workers fail?

Cynicism
One of the reasons why social workers do not act upon the imminent death for one of their “clients” (while the parents are real clients) is that there is a Darwinistic bent in them. They know that the parents are no good and their offspring has received genes only from them. They may think that with such no-good parents the child’s life would anyway be insufferably bad and that (s)he would likely become a client at social services at a later stage in life. They think that the child deserves its fate as if it was a “Darwin Award” 🥇🏆. And they are wrong, of course, in so many ways.

“Inward Empathy”
Another reason why social workers are inert is that they practise what could be termed “inward empathy”. They think to themselves: “What if this happened to myself?” “What if my baby was taken from me like this, how would I react, what would my sentiments be like?” Most probably they think that that would not be okay, that they would be livid and most probably resort to desperate measures. We also must remember that the standard of living of a social worker might not be that much higher than that of one of her clients. A grand or two per month separates the two.

Threat of Reprisal
The last reason is that social workers fear retribution. The same goes for judges, principals and prosecutors, anyone who work in affairs dealing with people in municipal, national or provincial services. They think to themselves: “What if the parents direct against myself the same sort of violence that they are capable of inflicting on their own child?” It’s a valid concern, but still without grounds. The latter are not as helpless as that child. The evil parents are not as powerful as they think. In most cases social workers could guard themselves against violent parents, who are on a feckless, reckless downward spiral.

Given that the reasons for bad social work are those mentioned above, I do not see any other way to solve destinies and fates as outlined above than changing legal policies concerning governmental workers. They should be held co-responsible for deaths of people who die on their watch. They could just as well be tried as co-defendants in conjunction with the actual perpetrators. The pool of defendants would be broadened to social workers, standing trial beside the couple who were primarily responsible for the death of a child or another one under custody (a disabled or elderly person). They would also receive a lighter unsuspended sentence along with the main offenders.

Reasons for this harsh initiative is that our system should guard those who are harmless, shieldless and vulnerable as opposed to those who are capable of economical, intellectual, physical and social violence. It would also adhere to the principle of contraria contrariis curantur. As social workers enjoy the full benefits of pension, perks and salary as being funded by taxpayers, they should accept that at times they be housed in the “State’s hotel” (penitentiary) on taxpayers’ dime, to whom they owe all. It would be a crying shame, but that is not OUR problem. Furthermore, this practice would considerably improve on the decisions they made, from the first conviction onward.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Kansallinen hätätila mitä tulee lastensuojeluun on puheen aiheena. Koska esitän erittäin voimaperäistä toimenpidettä, minun tulee olla puoleni ensimmäinen puhuja, jotta se esitettäisiin oikealla hetkellä. Muut voivat sitten jatkaa siitä. Parilleni antaisin tehtäväksi puhua pariskuntien profiloinnin puolesta, joita sivuan 2. kappaleen lopussa. Opposition tehtävä on puolustaa status quo’ta.